Murray forced to defend Lendl relationship

Andy Murray has been forced to defend his coaching relationship with Ivan Lendl following a run of poor form through the first five months of the year.

The world No.1 came into the 2017 season on the back of a 24 match win-streak that helped him to overtake Novak Djokovic at the top of the world rankings. However, a sluggish start to 2017 has led to questions in the British press about his motivation, and working relationship with the Czech Grand Slam winner.

“Last year, after Wimbledon, I saw Ivan at the US Open,” Murray said after his first round win aver Andrey Kuznetsov. “But from Wimbledon through until the World Tour Finals, I only spent two weeks [at the US Open] with him.

“I had pretty much the best period of my career, and no one mentioned Ivan not being around.”

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Murray has a win-loss record of 16-7 in 2017, and has suffered early exits at tournaments like Indian Wells (2R) and Rome (2R). Lendl has only worked with the Scot at one tournament (Australian Open) so far this year.

“If things aren’t going well people will try and find the reason why that is and blame Ivan, or an injury, or that I’m not motivated,” Murray continued. “But I don’t think that it’s anything to do with Ivan not being there. I have a good team around me that have helped me a lot.

“I do think that ideally we would have spent more time together. I do think that at Miami we were going to spend time there, but unfortunately I couldn’t with the injury.

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“That’s the situation that we’re in. It worked fine last year and no one said anything, but because things didn’t go well this year, there has to be a reason.”

This is the second time that Murray and Lendl have worked together. The Czech former No.1 first teamed up with Murray in 2011, but the pair eventually parted company in 2014 because Lendl “couldn’t commit enough time to do the job properly”. They began working together again in 2016.

Murray plays world No.50 Martin Klizan in the second round of Roland Garros.